Shakespeare out of the blue

 

"All the changes in the world, for good and evil, were first brought about by words."

~ Jacqueline Kennedy

---------------------- [excerpts from Camera Girl] ----------------

27

MEETING OF THE MINDS

March 1953

"He was not the candy-and-flowers type, so now and then he'd give me a book," Jackie recalled about the days she and Jack were in a groove, seemingly headed in the same direction.

        ...She liked opera and he liked Irish-American tunes, but both enjoyed popular music.  ...Both loved movies and Hollywood gossip.

The gifts he got for her were memorable:  two books -- The Raven, by Marquis James, and Pilgrim's Way, by John Buchan.  They were not random choices.  In giving her both books, he revealed just how attentive he was to how she thought, and her habit of casting those in her life as classical archetypes.

        The Raven was a 1930 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Sam Houston, one of Jack's heroes, the Texas military and political leader who helped forge the state's independence.  

As he had done in his biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, and Woodrow Wilson, author Marquis James used detailed documentation, colorful prose, and dramatic narrative to animate Houston as the protagonist among a galaxy of other Lone Star State heroes.  

The publisher even billed the book as "the stuff of which legend is made."  

        It was the way Jackie liked her history--not a bloodless academic study, but the winding, vibrant tale of how one human could lead a movement and symbolize an era.  It's easy to imagine that Jack gave her the book as a glimpse into how he hoped he himself might someday be viewed in history.

        John Buchan had written Pilgrim's Way about his distinguished career as a British diplomat, including serving as Canadian governor general.  His sensibilities as both novelist and historian blended in his profiles of famous English politicians from King George V to Raymond Asquith, the latter being one of Kennedy's heroes.

        ...Another mutual passion was Shakespeare.  She was struck by Jack's ability to quote from his works "out of the blue."  "He knew all the great speeches and the problem of every man in those plays," she recalled of Jack, naming Henry V and Richard III as his favorites....  Unlike herself, Jackie later wrote, "Jack did not write poetry.  But he always read it:  alone, and to me."  ...He was, in her words, "not romantic, but idealistic."

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